“Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.”

As translated in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) by Walter Kaufmann, p. 96

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Friedrich Nietzsche655

German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and cl… 1844–1900

Elin Hilderbrand (1969) American writer

Source: A Summer Affair

“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“there is no collective guilt,… guilt is individual, like salvation." [p.28]”

Frederick Forsyth book The Odessa File

Source: The Odessa File

“The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Aber es steht doch in der Regel so, daß die Seele schuldig werden muß, um das schlecht Bestehende zu vernichten, um nicht durch idyllischen Rückzug, scheingute Duldung des Unrechts noch schuldiger zu werden.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 36

“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Source: On Death and Dying (1969), Ch. 9

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Context: It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.